Review: 'Logan' Could Be First Superhero Movie To Get Best Picture Nomination

The superhero genre gets one of its all-time great entries as Hugh Jackman returns a final time to the role that made him a superstar, in director James Mangold's Logan. The supposed last chapter in the superhero Wolverine's cinematic saga, Logan brings with it an R-rating and a great deal of mystery about the exact nature of the story, how it all plays out for the beloved mutant character, and what it means for the future of the X-Men.

Source: Fox

First, some background. The X-Men franchise has taken nearly $4.4 billion in ticket sales from nine feature film releases worldwide since 2000. Those films have also earned an additional $750+ million in domestic home entertainment sales and rentals, and more than $1 billion in total foreignBlu-ray/DVD/Digital-HD sales and rentals push worldwide. It is the third-longest running superhero cinematic franchise in history, behind only Superman and Batman, and is the longest running "continuing storyline" superhero franchise of all time. Hugh Jackman has portrayed Wolverine more times on the big screen (Logan being his ninth performance in the role) than any other actor has portrayed any superhero in feature films.

That's an impressive bunch of information, and we could also note that aside from a couple of exceptions, the series overall has enjoyed good reviews and is one of the best, most consistently entertaining and high-quality franchises at the modern box office. And Jackman as Wolverine has become one of the most iconic, defining superhero performances in history, alongside Christopher Reeve as Superman and Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man.

So it is that Logan is a significant moment in the history of X-Men movies and superhero portrayals, being a sort of bookend to Jackman's incarnation of Wolverine and setting up a transition for the franchise to a whole new direction. I won't go too much into details, since I want to be as spoiler-free as possible here, but we already knew that Deadpool was part of Fox's setting the stage for a turn toward the New Mutants and X-Force, and so it could be that Logan will wind up being the franchise's bookmark of sorts to mark the beginning of the new direction.

Source: Fox

Now, some financial considerations before we get into my full review. 300 in 2007 and Watchmen in 2009 were the only two R-rated March openings north of $50 million in North America, taking $70 million and $55 million, respectively. R-rated films, in general, tend to have a harder time hitting bigger blockbuster territory since the teenage demographic and family demographics tend to be excluded from the pot. Only nine R-rated movies have ever topped the $500 million bar, so if Logan managed that feat it would push that to an even ten.

The most recent release within the franchise was X-Men: Apocalypse, which opened to $65+ million (not counting its four-day weekend bonus from Monday ticket sales) and pulled $155 million domestically and $544 million worldwide. That 2.3x multiplier at home resulted in a 33% decline from the domestic box office of the previous film, X-Men: Days of Future Past, and Apocalypse's $544 million total was likewise a big drop from the $747+ million haul of Days of Future Past.

Source: Fox

In his solo outings, Wolverine has had mixed results. X-Men Origins: Wolverine opened in 2009 to a huge $85 million in North America, but wound up with barely more than a 2x multiplier and $179+ million domestically, for global sales of $373 million. The poor reviews and weak audience reactions didn't help, and it was the first time the series suffered a decline from one film to the next. However, the character's next spinoff movie -- 2013's The Wolverine, directed by Mangold -- was a much bigger hit, opening to a more modest $53 million before getting its legs and running to a $414 million total, the second-highest gross of the series at the time. More importantly, though, it followed a series "reset" in X-Men: First Class that, while representing a continued financial decline for the superhero franchise, signaled a return to much higher quality and better critical reception, setting the stage for The Wolverine to continue that trend of better critical and audience reactions. And that, in turn, led to better box office.

Days of Future Past continued the upward trend for quality, reviews, and revenue stream, delivering pretty much the definitive X-Men team-up movie experience and proving just how great and successful the brand can be. It's unfortunate that the follow-up, Apocalypse, stumbled (in large part because it, unlike Days of Future Past, failed to fully embrace its period-setting concept and get the most out of it, while suffering from a climactic battle that was probably the least interesting of the series).

Whether that stumble will have a significant impact on Logan's box office remains to be seen, but I doubt it will. Hugh Jackman's characterization, the fact this is supposedly his last outing in the role, the novelty of the R-rating, the excellent marketing, and the sheer quality of the film (which I assume will be reflected in the reviews as they begin to roll out in the coming days) will combine with eventually positive audience word of mouth to lift Logan's financial performance.

Source: Fox

Last February's Deadpool defied all expectations for it's R-rated performance, delivering a massive $132 million domestic opening and a final cume of $363 million stateside and $783 million globally. It managed that remarkable run despite lacking a release in China, and off of a modest $58 million budget. China could've potentially added enough revenue to push the final tally north of $800 million. But realistically, Logan is unlikely to perform at the same lightening-in-a-bottle level as Deadpool -- not that it's not good enough, but rather that Deadpool simply offered such a radical departure from expectations and featured a story rooted in hilarity to make it equivalent to an R-rated comedy that happens to also be an action-superhero flick.

The R-rating can work to Logan's advantage or disadvantage, since it reduces access for teens and younger fans who don't sneak into the screenings or convince an adult to take them, yet it lets Logan stand out from the typical superhero cinematic offerings and could remind viewers of Deadpool. Fans of Wolverine have long awaited a screen version unleashed in his full bloody fury, and they certainly get their wish with Logan. It is graphically violent, more so than any superhero film we've seen to date and on par with some horror movies. Likewise, the profanity is constant and extreme, too.

Source: Fox

The tone and adult themes are disturbing and would be hard for younger fans to fully understand, and what they do understand would surely upset them a great deal. The point being, Logan will depend on mature audiences showing up and then returning for second viewings, spreading the good word, and occasionally taking their teenage kids or adult friends and family members to see it too. But a strong word of caution here, I'm not kidding about the R-rating, this is definitely not a film for younger kids used to PG and PG-13 levels of violence and danger.

Early tracking suggests a domestic opening of $60 million for Logan, but that number will climb higher as we approach opening weekend, and I expect it'll hit more in the $65-70+ million range when it's all said and done. If so, then a multiplier in line with Days of Future Past would give it a domestic cume in the $175+/- million range, and a worldwide take somewhere around $520 million. The higher end in that particular scenario would push it to $180+ million domestic and $530 million worldwide.

However, if it plays to the lower end of predictions and opens to $50-55 million, and has a multiplier akin to Wolverine's other solo adventures, then we could expect a North American performance somewhere between $115-135 million, with $125 million as a good mid-range estimate. That would suggest a final worldwide take of roughly $350 million as the worst-case and something in the $400 million range as the modest-case outcome.

Source: Fox

For now, I'm expecting a domestic opening in the $70 million range, and a multiplier in the 2.6x range, for an early-estimate North American cume of about $180 million. Worldwide, I think we'll see a grand total of roughly $530-540 million, in line with X-Men: Apocalypse. While Logan is superior to that film, I think the R-rating will work against it's overall box office performance to some extent, since it doesn't have the added newness, irreverence, and profane humor-galore that helped Deadpool use its own R rating as an advantage. If we see a domestic opening north of $70 million, however, and early overseas totals exceed expectations despite the restricted audience, then I'll be inclined to think it might head toward a cume north of $550 million. Anything in the $420+ million range is perfectly acceptable and a good, consistent performance for the character going it alone, while anything north of $500 million is a big victory.

So, let's talk about my headline, and why Logan is the great and iconic Wolverine tale you've been waiting for...

Logan is the first superhero movie since The Dark Knight to have a strong chance of being considered among the contenders for Best Picture, come Oscar time in early-2018. It could hypothetically also be considered a contender for some other awards, including Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor, too. We've had many great superhero movies over the years, but it takes a certain type and tone, a certain quality, a certain combination of factors -- including directing, acting, scripting, and so on -- to really be a serious contender. We've only had a very few that ever seemed to have a serious chance, and Logan joins those ranks because it's one of the best of the best.

Source: Fox

As The Wolverine was Mangold's samurai take on the character, Logan is definitely the western approach, and obviously samurai cinema and western cinema have a great deal of overlap. So if you want a very general comparison, the tone and feel of Logan is sort of like if Clint Eastwood's character in Unforgiven had been a claw-wielding mutant and the story was set in the future instead of the past. We could also compare it to Mangold's own terrific western 3:10 to Yuma, for that matter. But certainly, the genre influences are strong and reminiscent of other modern day westerns such as No Country For Old Men and Hell or High Water, while being very hard to compare to any other actual superhero movies.

I watched the first 45 minutes of Logan at a special sneak preview back in December, and came out thinking I'd just seen the first superhero movie that felt truly comparable to The Dark Knight in terms of its sheer dramatic power and defiance of genre expectations. That's when I first thought it had potential to become an Oscar contender, but I determined to wait until I'd seen the entire film before settling into any such prediction. It is with relief and excitement that I can confirm not only did the full film confirm my feelings in that regard, but also that the rest of the film gets even better than what I'd previously seen.

Source: Fox

I've been a big fan of Mangold's films, especially Cop Land (a personal favorite of mine), Girl Interrupted, Walk the Line, 3:10 to Yuma (another personal favorite), and The Wolverine. Logan is another amazing entry to his library of work, and another personal favorite for me. His clear love of the material and care for the character, and his desire to come back and add a second part to his cinematic adaptation of Wolverine, result in a majestic scope and classic spirit of the film. The Shane influences are worn on its sleeve (that film literally appears directly in Logan at one point) to great effect, and we get imagery and vistas reminiscent of iconic shots from the best John Ford films, while the gunplay and extreme violence -- particularly the way it can come out of nowhere, during moments of seeming calm and happiness -- bring to mind Sam Peckinpah.

Logan is the most beautifully rendered film in the X-Men franchise, and the most visually unique of the bunch. Within the genre overall, it stands out in this regard as well, with only a very few films comparing (the Dark Knight trilogy and Watchmen come instantly to mind, ). It's about more than having an identifiable aesthetic, instead speaking to the way the film captures an entire attitude and idea of itself in its visuals, its framing of shot, and how those things are in turn reflections of the story and characters and themes. It's not hard to have a "look," but it's hard for that look to not just mean something but also reinforce and speak to story and meaning. Mangold seems to have born this in mind in every frame, not out of sense of trying to force it to comply but out of artistic vision so absolute he imbues all elements of the work with that vision.

I freely admit I was a skeptic about the need to have an R-rating, and I've long argued (and still believe, as an overall principle) that films should be concerned with being what they need to be instead of intentionally shooting for a specific rating, while at the same time being aware that PG-13 is broad enough now to allow most anything necessary and desirable to be conveyed in superhero filmmaking without excluding entire segments of fandom based on age. But there are undeniably times when violence, profanity, and other "adult" elements and content have a very precise and necessary role to play in artistic expression, in order to breathe added meaning and visceral effect and weight to a work.

Source: Fox

Whatever doubts I had about the need for Logan to provide R-rated chaos and destruction in a Wolverine story, I was completely mistaken. This isn't violence for violence's sake, nor is it a cheap appeal to that segment of audiences who want graphic violence and profanity simply because of their own self-consciousness about whether their fan interests are "grown up" enough. Logan uses violence, profanity, and other unnerving, shocking artistic choices the way a film like Bonnie and Clyde, The Passion of the Christ, The Wild Bunch, or RoboCop for example pushed boundaries as statements and to speak to greater truths about the characters and the world they inhabit, to evoke responses that make the moments of violence resonate within the viewer as expressions of the themes and how we connect to them personally.

Feeling branded forever by the violence we do to others, as surely as we are branded by the violence done to us, for example. The conflicts and contrasts between our fear of being hurt and wronged, compared to our fear of hurting and wronging others, and what our lives mean if we allow them to be defined by such moments, or conversely if we deny how much we can be defined by them. Even our mistakes, the harm done because of them, and the harm caused when we try to help others only to fail time and again until we wind up not only refusing to help but actively causing harm to avoid helping. These are the things Logan concerns itself with, as well as the related suffering, violence, outrage, grief, and profane voice given to all these things in our lives.

This is easily Jackman's greatest performance as Wolverine, allowing him to delve deeper into the persona than any previous film. He not only brings the usual cynicism, anger, and regret, but also a wonderfully confused mix of compassion, exhaustion, and bitterness in his complex relationship with Charles Xavier. Then we see his struggle to deny attachment and caring, when Laura enters the equation. Through their travels in the film, Wolverine encounters other regular people and is forced to let his guard down and remember what it was once like to trust, to love, and to feel part of a family. And inevitably, he is drawn back round to his angst, his rage, his sorrow, and his sense of having no place in this world. He's more vulnerable this time out, not just emotionally carrying so much baggage he's grown too weary to manage anymore, but also in a literal physically sense.

Source: Fox

We can relate to him more than ever before, and the film doubles down on this by grounding itself in a much more realistic world and set of events, with no costumes and a careful application of superpowers posited within more relatable contexts. Jackman has been nominated once before for an Academy Award, as lead actor in 2012's Les Misérables, and it's possible (although admittedly unlikely, due to the limited number of spots available and how early Logan is releasing this year) he could earn another with this performance. If this is truly his final performance as he and Fox claim, then it's a grand sendoff.

Patrick Stewart's Xavier is at his finest here, too. He's still a teacher of sorts, but much more a father figure, and Stewart is allowed to go beyond the requirements of more traditional "superhero leader" boundaries this time around. He gets to be grumpy, to make mistakes, to speak more bluntly and realistically to Wolverine about their past and about the other man's history. And there's a painful addition to his characterization in Logan, one that is such a surprise and so touchingly sad and human a depiction that we don't notice the second layer of pain and revelation until it's upon us later in the film.

The banter between Jackman and Stewart provides some of Logan's best moments, and makes me wish we'd had more of it in the other X-Men films. This is probably Stewart's last turn as Professor X, and if so then he certainly goes out on a career-high performance in the series.

Source: Fox

The introduction of Laura (aka X-23) as portrayed by Dafne Keen will make her an instant fan-favorite character, one suitable for precisely the sort of crossover appeal allowing her to exist in both the more dramatic, mature storylines and scenes of an X-Men film like Logan and the more humorous, violently satirical sort of approach found in Deadpool. She has a future in the series, and the only question is how Fox will choose to bridge the gap. The film certainly makes the necessary arrangements to allow the aforementioned transition toward an entirely new cast of characters and approaches for the series, simultaneously maintaining connective tissue to the previous series of films yet also providing for another sort of "soft reboot" akin to what First Class accomplished.

Keen is superb in a role that has few actual speaking moments, requiring her to emote nonverbally while also maintaining a subdued set of expressions. She is guarded, angry, nearly feral in her emotions and behaviors, and yet Keen displays a wide range of nuance and draws us into her perspective so we can relate to her and perceive her as an innocent child, in direct conflict with the barbaric violence and raging hostility we've witnessed from her. It's not easy to hold your own in a scene with Hugh Jackman, particularly when he's playing Wolverine and particularly when you're a child actor in your first feature film. But Keen manages to pull it off, and steals practically every scene she's in.

Source: Fox

The visual effects are all very realistic, rooted in a real-world sensibility and with only a few rare, short examples of "powers" on display to carry things into a more overtly fantastical realm. I don't mean to imply that fantastical things don't belong in superhero films or that having less of them is somehow inherently "better," but rather that in this film the story and its effect are greatly served by relying on less of such things and keeping most of the action and events as relatable as possible. The effects during the graphic violence and gorier sequences are especially effective, and serve the larger ideas about the violence we do to one another and the real implications and longterm effects it has on our psyche.

Operatic and also deeply personal, Logan is one of the true great films of the superhero genre, among the best films of 2017 to date, and a rousing send-off for the old guard while ushering in the future of the X-Men franchise.

I work as a screenwriter for film & TV. In a former life I was a media specialist & campaign ad writer. Follow me on Twitter @MarkHughesFilms; add me on Google+; and read my question and answers about film, comics, and more on Quora....